


False idols

by apathyinreverie



Series: Team Tony [4]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Civil War Team Iron Man, Gen, Not Steve Rogers Friendly, Peter-centric, not team Cap friendly, set somewhere between Civil War and Infinity War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:20:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28789353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apathyinreverie/pseuds/apathyinreverie
Summary: Like every kid in the US, Peter grew up loving Captain America comics, grew up idolizing Cap.Then he meets the real thing.Let’s just say, he very much preferred the comic book version.(The one where Peter really wishes people would realize that what appears most heroic isn’t necessarily the right thing to do and that someone loudly proclaiming themselves a hero does not necessarily make them one of the good guys.)
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Team Tony [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2161674
Comments: 97
Kudos: 832
Collections: Team Iron Man/Anti Steve





	False idols

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** Like it says in the tags, this is unapologetically **Team Iron Man**. Just, be warned.

It takes Peter a while to fit the pieces together.

In the beginning, when Tony Stark shows up in his living room and then so very casually talks about Peter’s best kept secret like it is common knowledge, when Iron Man invites him on an Avenger mission and Peter trails after him like a happy little duckling, after he meets all the Avengers and quite a few more who he doesn’t quite recognize but just assumes must be part of it as well, maybe only recently invited, exactly like him. Right after all that, Peter is far too giddy at the insanely awesome turn his life has taken - at getting to meet the Avengers, his heroes, _the_ heroes - to notice anything being off.

So, he thinks he can be forgiven for not noticing right away, the way he misses some rather crucial… details.

Things like certain questions, such as why Tony Stark saw the need to seek out Peter at all. Or why Tony Stark took him – of all people – along while facing off against Captain America. Not to even mention, why the Avengers were facing off against each other at all. Why there were two sides, the Avengers clearly split cleanly down the middle. Why Tony Stark showed up at Peter’s home with a black eye, moving gingerly, like he couldn’t quite move as he wanted to, like breathing in too deeply hurt, like moving too abruptly made him wince the slightest bit.

So, yes, it takes Peter a while. It takes him until after Germany to be exact, until after they are already back home and Mr. Stark dropped him off once more. After the two sides had fought and Peter hadn’t been able to keep up all the way through, having to tap out at some point. After Captain America, one of his childhood heroes, had just walked away from Peter, not directly harming him but leaving him stuck all the same and seemingly not really caring either.

He doesn’t entirely know what the fight was about, thinks even Mr. Stark hadn’t been entirely certain, that he’d been just as taken off guard by the ferocity of the attacks levied at them by those who were supposed to be on the same side. But one thing Peter does know is that it hadn’t been them, hadn’t been Mr. Stark’s side who had thrown the hardest punches, who had wrought the most destruction.

They are all supposed to be the good guys, at least generally on the same side.

At least, that’s what Peter had thought.

And rather obviously, Mr. Stark had been taken just as aback as Peter by the fact that they apparently weren’t anymore.

After the reality of this being an actual fight hit home, of this not just being a spat or a disagreement as Mr. Stark had expected, had even asserted it wouldn’t come to an actual fight to everyone on his side ahead of the confrontation, but a real fight, with weapons and the other side putting their all into taking them out. After Mr. Stark’s best friend got hurt, paralyzed.

After Peter realized in that limousine, right before being dropped off, that so much as mentioning the Avengers had something… _other_ flit over Mr. Stark’s face. Something unforgiving and dark and definitely painful.

So, yes, it takes him a while to fit the pieces together.

However, once he is back, once he has a little time to think, after their trip to Germany that didn’t go at all as he had imagined it might go, the pieces do fit. Even if Peter doesn’t much like the picture he comes up with. At all.

Even more so when he then goes back to do some research, to watch the various interviews of Cap, before and after the war, going through everything with a fine-toothed comb. Because, well, Peter works best if he has all the information there is to be found on any given topic.

Turns out, Cap’s various appearances in the press since he reappeared don’t really amount to much, and what the man says amounts to even less, barely a couple of sentences that would look great on a motivational poster but don’t really have all that much substance beyond ‘do your best’ and ‘don’t let anyone stop you’ and ‘I try to be a hero by doing what’s heroic’. Well, there are also a whole lot of mentions about ‘little guys from Brooklyn’. Like that’s some sort of badge of honor to be carried. But there isn’t much else. No real substance.

It makes Peter feel somewhat uncomfortable, frowning at his screen as he scrolls through press statements and interviews and documentaries and opinion pieces.

Especially once he realizes that there is nothing at all to be seen of the Avengers whenever it’s about clean-up and restoration and rebuilding. And there certainly isn’t anything whatsoever to be found of them whenever it’s about taking the blame.

That’s all Tony Stark, sometimes in person, sometimes in the form of SI representatives making an appearance, sometimes by way of his various foundations or charities to cover the likely astronomical costs caused by collapsed buildings, or even on a smaller scale, private property being damaged or the endless medical bills by the many civilians harmed along the way.

Don’t get him wrong, the Avengers do show up whenever there is a problem, quite a number of missions where Iron Man himself never actually makes it to the site himself. But once that one very specific problem is fixed – by way of explosions and punches being thrown – they disappear again, not to be heard of until the next problem presents itself. Never mind the destruction wrought, the lives lost, the many injured. That part is all Mr. Stark.

It doesn’t sit right with Peter how Mr. Stark gives press conferences to assuage everyone’s fears and soothe their anger after missions that Iron Man didn’t even take part in.

Peter digs deeper.

Which is how he comes across something else, while looking into the many interviews Mr. Stark has given over the years, especially those from the old days, the kinds that were still printed instead of done in front of a camera. Interviews where Mr. Stark humorously mentions his obsession with Captain America as a little kid, how he’d grown up a fanboy of America’s biggest icon just like any other kid in America.

Just like Peter.

But those mentions stopped right around the time Captain America suddenly reappeared in their own time again.

Admittedly, Peter might not have noticed that change, might have missed it like everyone else seems to have.

If it weren’t for that look in Mr. Stark’s eyes whenever anyone mentions the Avengers to him these days, something that makes Peter’s heart squeeze, chest a little too tight, even if he can’t quite put his finger on what exactly it is he sees in Mr. Stark’s eyes whenever his old teammates are mentioned.

Then again, maybe he does get it at least a little.

Because Peter himself has woken up more than once, gasping, heart pounding, grasping at his now-entirely-fine ribs, images of Captain America, the epitome of all that is good and righteous, one of his own childhood heroes, so easily bringing down that airplane walkway on top of him, simply assuming Peter would be strong enough to hold it up or not caring if he hadn’t been, before simply walking away, leaving him, not giving a second thought about Peter being stuck, struggling to hold up that airplane walkway threatening to crush him.

And, sure, he gets that they had been on opposite sides at that time and, yes, Peter got out entirely fine. But the image of Captain America just walking away, leaving him, despite the comic book version of him so often proclaiming ‘no man left behind’…

 _Never meet your heroes, indeed_ , Peter thinks.

Because, it had been Mr. Stark who’d come to find him in the middle of the fight, to make sure Peter was alright and ordering him to stay down, asserting that Peter was done in a tone that Peter is used to hearing from Aunt May.

Mr. Stark, who even these days still keeps in contact, who isn’t always able to make it himself but has made sure that Peter always has someone to call in Happy.

It admittedly still bugs him that Tony Stark doesn’t consider him good enough, strong enough, old enough to be a full member of the Avengers and, yes, he hates how Mr. Stark is so very clearly more concerned with keeping him safe than he is with truly training him or making him a full Avenger.

Then again, having someone almost like a mentor, who so clearly cares, just because Peter is Peter, someone who spends literal hours explaining stuff to Peter, someone who always answers his phone when Peter calls – or, well, at least calls back once he can – and sometimes even shows up in person, someone who seems to be forever working on improving Peter’s suit, spending endless hours on tech that is solely meant for Peter and no one else.

And, boy, if that doesn’t warm his heart like nothing else.

So, yes, having a sort of mentor figure is nice.

Or rather, it’s the best thing ever.

So, he doesn’t feel bad about internally resolving that – if there are ever any more conflicts in the future where Peter might be called in for backup again – he’ll be immovably on Mr. Stark’s side. Because Mr. Stark cares. About everyone.

He cares the same way Peter cares, about faceless strangers and their entire planet and convinced that every single person should get to live the best life they can possibly manage. Peter isn’t fooled by the sarcasm, has seen too far behind the man’s mask, has seen Mr. Stark hurt and in pain and afraid for his best friend’s life and close-to-heartbroken at the betrayal by someone he considered a teammate if not a friend. So, Peter isn’t blinded by Tony Stark’s press smile or his faux-nonchalant supposed dismissal of everything around him. Not anymore.

Then again, maybe Peter would have brushed all of these particular revelations aside, maybe he’d have filed the fight in Germany under ‘friendly – if unexpectedly brutal – disagreement’ or something.

If it hadn’t been for Siberia.

He only hears about Siberia because Peter is with Happy - badgering the man about more Avenger missions and trying not to seem too eager or desperate with his questions about whether Happy might possibly maybe have heard from Mr. Stark and whether the man maybe said something about Peter and how he did during the fight in Germany and whether he did anything wrong or even whether he maybe possibly did anything _right_ and so on - when the man gets the call. A call that has all color draining from Happy’s face, has his fists clench, eyes narrowing, angry in a way Peter hasn’t seen the seemingly-forever-calm man ever be before.

Of course, Peter isn’t actually supposed to follow Happy to the hospital, isn’t supposed to be there at all, isn’t supposed to see Mr. Stark in the hospital bed, and he certainly isn’t supposed to secretly stick around, to stand guard over Mr. Stark just in case any of Iron Man’s less-than-ordinary enemies might try their chance to go after him right now while he is unable to defend himself as he usually would.

Then again, sneaking around is kind of Peter’s thing these days. He’s gotten good at it.

Point is, Peter knows he isn’t supposed to see Mr. Stark stuck in a hospital bed or see him be transported back home by his friends, once the doctors declare him sufficiently stable for transport at all.

And let him just say, Peter doesn’t appreciate the reminder that - for all his heroism and impossible feats and his larger-than-life persona - Tony Stark is very much unenhanced, unlike Peter and Cap and almost everyone else meddling in the superhero business, doesn’t heal faster than any other regular human being, isn’t able to knit himself back together if given a good night’s rest.

No, Peter doesn’t appreciate the reminder at all.

And he certainly doesn’t appreciate the fact that Mr. Stark’s old teammate rather clearly saw no reason to pull his punches even when it was two against one, despite Iron Man clearly doing the opposite. You know, since everyone on this planet knows that the Iron Man suit could level an entire city within the blink of an eye. So, if Cap walked away from that fight and Mr. Stark didn’t, then it’s very clear that only one of them was pulling their punches. And it certainly wasn’t the supposed-embodiment-of-all-that-is-good-and-righteous.

Then again, by that point, Peter isn’t entirely surprised to hear that Cap must have walked away right after, must have left Tony Stark behind despite definitely needing medical support. No, this just hammers in the last nail into the coffin of his childhood idolization of a man who so clearly doesn’t deserve it in real life.

Thankfully, it’s not like Captain America was ever Peter’s _only_ childhood hero. Not at all.

Turns out, ‘never meet your heroes’ might be true enough when applied to Cap, but the opposite is certainly true with Mr. Stark. Tony Stark who turned out to be so _much_ more, so much _better_ in person than he ever appeared – much less claimed to be – as Iron Man.

If anything, Peter thinks that whoever wrote those Captain America comics deserves to be sued for all they are worth for making entire generations believe in a man who so clearly doesn’t deserve it.

Maybe he can ask Mr. Stark about suing whoever is responsible for feeding their country that particular bit of bullshit. For damages and lost childhood dreams.

Yeah. Once Mr. Stark wakes, Peter might do just that.

+++

So, when Peter comes across Cap barely weeks later, the former Avengers once more meddling in things Peter is fairly certain they really have no right meddling in at all, it’s with the image of Mr. Stark in a hospital bed, struggling to recover from whatever happened between the fight in Germany and the call Happy got on his phone while having just picked up Peter.

It’s the image of Mr. Stark stuck with tubes and needles and covered in bandages to the point that the doctors might as well have wrapped him whole for all that there was barely any skin left uncovered by the bandages anyway. It’s the image of Happy’s furrowed brow as he stood guard at the door, barely willing to let the medical personnel past, the image of the dark circles under Colonel Rhodes’ eyes, having his own hospital bed rolled into his best friend’s room against the doctor’s protests, the image of Miss Pott’s barely perceptibly reddened eyes.

So, when Peter meets Cap again, sees the man recognize him – if only due to him being very much in his Spiderman suit at the time - and sees Cap nod a greeting, watchful but something almost like a friendly smile forming on Cap’s face, watches the way he steps closer to Peter, reaching out for a handshake, mouth opening for what is likely going to be some sort of greeting or maybe commiseration or whatever else. Peter doesn’t much care.

He doesn’t even give the man the time to fully get out whatever words he might have been intending to say.

Instead, he moves, one foot moving half a step backwards, arm pulling back.

And lays Cap out flat with a single punch to the jaw, barely spares the time to watch the guy hit the ground. Before he is already turning, doesn’t care to make sure that Cap is truly out, certain enough of his own strength to know that the man will at least take a couple of moments to get his bearings back no matter the guy’s own enhancements. Peter only used his left hand anyway despite being right-handed, so it’s not like he put all of his power behind that punch. Cap should be able to recover quickly. Within an hour or so.

Because Mr. Stark would be so disappointed in Peter if he actually did true harm to Cap, the way Mr. Stark himself didn't even when he had every reason to, if only to defend himself. You know, the way a real hero is _supposed_ to handle things.

So, the punch is on behalf of Mr. Stark, on behalf of Peter, on behalf of everyone who ever considered Cap a hero and has by now learned better or might possibly even still be in the belief that Cap ever deserved that title.

Peter barely spares his old childhood hero laid out on the ground a glance, instead just turns, a flick of his hand, and then he is already swinging away, utterly disinterested in anything the group of supposed heroes now clamoring behind him might have to say.

He already has a hero. The _real_ thing.

He has no need for cheap imitations.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this didn't really turn out the way I had intended at all... It was supposed to be lighthearted and fluffy and just a nice little snippet. No idea how it turned out to be so very salty instead XD
> 
> And I know the timeline is a little messy but I couldn’t seem to quite make up my mind on which sort of ‘verse to set this in, whether to have things go exactly as they did in the MCU (with Tony dying while saving the universe and Peter only really meeting the Avengers again at the funeral), or whether to have things go differently here (and everything is perfect and fluffy and Tony never dies at all). Thus, I kept it purposely vague and instead went for some in-between thing (where Peter randomly runs into the Avengers at some point after CW), so feel free to imagine whichever version suits you best :D
> 
> Would love to know what you think!


End file.
